The Wolverine

Tara and I went and saw “The Wolverine” last night and off the bat, I’ll saw I was happy it wasn’t overly loud. Guessing that’s the theater, but hopefully it’s something we’ll see/hear more of in the future.

Anyway, the movie starts off with a bit of back story of Logan/Wolverine in Japan during WWII. And sadly, it also starts part of maybe the biggest issue with the movie: Japanese stereotypes. They’re not offensive in any way, but after the movie is over, we found ourselves laughing at how many there were, and it covered1. The movie largely takes place in Japan, with a fair amount of Japanese spoken (with and without subtitles, depending on if they want you to rely on another character translating). It mainly focuses around Logan hiding from his Wolverine persona, and protecting the grand-daughter of a man he saved back in WWII who had since started the equivalent of Sony, and was dying.

The movie fit the standard comic based movie, and was not a bad addition to the recent Marvel catalog, but I wouldn’t call it “good”. The last Wolverine movie was bad. This one is maybe on the plus side of okay. I’d watch it again, but I wouldn’t put it in my top list of comic movies, Marvel or not. I think it really comes down to, any comic movie based solely on one character seems difficult to pull off without being boring. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America did a good job of this, but doing one on Wolverine would be like doing a movie based entirely on Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Entertaining maybe, but not really something you could tease out a 2 hour movie from (which was how long “The Wolverine” was, which seemed a bit long).

So, in short, see it, but don’t expect something as good as Iron Man 1 (or 3), Thor, or Captain America. Expect something more like Iron Man 2. Okay, but not great.